Warhammer 40,000 – Space Marine Brutalis Dreadnought

While we had our last review covering a Dreadnought last year as part of our Horus Heresy Age of Darkness coverage with the Contemptor Dreadnought plastic kit, today we want to cover the new Space Marine Brutalis Dreadnought, available from today via the Strike Force Agastus.

The new Primaris sized Dreadnoughts are a bit of a mixture of the classic dreadnought we know from the 90s is classified as Castraferrum Pattern Mark V Dreadnought, and the old Rogue Trader era Dreadnought Armour. The early designs, closer to robots than the walking sarcophagus they are nowadays, were picked up with the Contemptor pattern. If you take a look on the legs, you see they are more articulated as with the Castraferrum pattern and the design department went back to that.

But the Redemptor and Brutalis are both much closer in design to the Castraferrum of the 90s, but clearly updated and refreshed. And while the Redemptor is the general warfare variant, the Brutalis has a clear connection to the Furioso Dreadnought of the Blood Angels from around the 3rd edition. The old metal miniatures from the 90s, got replaced with plastic kits, some were multi-class, covering different variants, others were specific like the Scriptor or Venerable, and are currently - as broad parts of the First Born range - replaced by newer, Primaris-sized kits.

With that  being said, the Brutalis is the third variant of the Primaris age walkers, if you include the Invictor Tactical Warsuit, which shares part of the design as well, but uses a still properly living marine instead of the remnants of a veteran.

Currently the Brutalis Dreadnought is only available through the Strike Force Agastus set, with a RRP of 155 EUR. It will be available on its own later, for approximately 55 EUR RRP (that's prior march pricing update assumption). As part of the Strike Force, it covers three plastic sprues and a large 90 mm base, but no decals. All decals included in the strike force set are for infantry, so beside one of the larger Ultramarines Insignia you won't have any decals for this model from that set.

Casting is clean and the sprues are tightly packed. All of them are brand new, no repurposed frames from the Redemptor. As the armour panels are slightly more present, this is no surprise.

But let us start building the Brutalis, with the sarcophagus. The inner core of the model, where the veteran remains would be embedded. The front comes with a single design, the older plastic kits of the Dreadnought usually had variants (partially chapter specific), but these don't. This is a different design from the Redemptor, and I assume you can swap them, but as the new Primaris Dreadnoughts have additional armour panels above these, that is not a big issue.

The chassis of the Brutalis either carries heavy bolters or multi-meltas. The mounts can be angled and I strayed apart from the instructions here and didn't glue the weapons in, as they hold from friction. So, in case you want to magnetise them, don't glue them to the mount.

Various other parts of the kit are just kept in place by friction or kept moveable, to please pay attention to this. For example, the lower front armour panel in front of the sarcophagus can be lowered and raised, so you only glue the handle but not the "lip".

While the armour panels had a bit of trouble to be properly aligned (and created a small gap on the upper edge), the upper front armour isn't glued, but again kept in place by friction and can be lowered and raised, giving access to the sarcophagus. This comes in two different designs. Both rather Codex Astartes compliant, so you can use these with a vast variety of chapters and use the armour panels on the left and right for specific insignia (or charms, trophies etc.).

While the upper torso is mostly complete, we begin with the legs. These are far more dynamic than the old Castraferrum pattern Dreadnoughts. You have a pelvis section with poseable hips / upper legs. Similar to the  Adeptus Titanicus kits, they come with suggestions you can simply build with the tongue and grove design, but could cut those away for a more free and more dynamic pose, if you wanted to.

The legs can be freely swapped from left to the right, as they have mounts on both sides and are identical (with the alteration of the angles). Once again, you can cut away certain elements for different poses.

The feet of the Brutalis Dreadnought come with sockets, who give you two standard poses each. One foot is fully assembled as a single cast piece, standing firmly on the ground, the other one has individual toes to match the surface (or have it stand of a fallen enemy).

Now let us add the final armour panels to the legs. The smaller round patches were a bit tricky do add, they have a small insert on the top, but even with that aligned, it was a tight fit.

Now for the arms. These are pretty impressive. They are held in place partially by friction, so you don't glue the entire piece, just certain areas. They are moveable / posable by ball joints and links and give you a lot of freedom, which is great for a close combat variant of a dreadnought. On top of that, the arms are turn locked to the body, similar to many turrets from the Warhammer 40k range, so you can take them off for transportation and most importantly for painting.

The Brutalis has two different close combat variants, talons and fists. Once again, don't glue everything just now. The fingers / claws are posable to a certain degree on both variants.

The fists are supported by storm bolters on each fist, and again here, don't glue everything together, just the build groups, you'll see why further below.

The final parts are the shoulder pads and the carapace mounted weaponry. The later is set on a disk, so you can turn it and depending on how you assemble it you can lower or raise the barrels to your need.

As the box and product images already provide a lot of comparison shots next to Primaris, I went for a comparison with the predecessor - the old Castraferrum pattern Dreadnought. And oh boy, is that a difference. Almost twice the height and much better proportion, this is an incredible update.

The first row covers the Brutalis Dreadnought with fists and bolters, and the second row with talons and multi-meltas, they are not even magnetized. Just kept in place by friction.

If you followed the steps in our review and only glued those parts in the "built units" we showed and can be seen below, you have a modular, easily magnetized variant of the Brutalis Dreadnought.

Conclusion

I haven't built the Redemptor Dreadnought, just this Brutalis Dreadnought, so my comparison is with the Contemptor from the Horus Heresy kit and the older plastic and metal dreads from earlier editions of Warhammer 40,000. This was a blast. It is a huge improvement compared to the Castraferrum, much more dynamic, and incredibly growth in size and with all the poseable pieces, it almost felt like an action figure (and I don't mean that in a negative way).

With the exception of the small gap on the front armour, I had no problems building this kit at all and I think it a very proper move by the design department, to include all the parts you need to build both variants and keep them modular (with a bit additional work even magnetized), without forcing you to choose one of them.

While it is currently only available through the Strike Force, this is a limitation only for a short amount of time and the final product is slightly more expensive than the older dreadnoughts, but with about 12 EURs difference you get a lot more of model to work with.

Warhammer Community already released a post on the painted models by different artists and they did a great job, covering from camouflaged to very iconic chapter colours, all kinds of different final results.

Warhammer 40,000 is a brand by Games Workshop.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer